


Open Season

by acascuseme



Category: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: F/F, Multi, bechloe - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-25
Updated: 2017-07-12
Packaged: 2018-11-18 23:20:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11300919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acascuseme/pseuds/acascuseme
Summary: It's five years after Beca Mitchell's graduation from Barden University, and after making a slightly scattered path North-ward in the United States, she has ended up in New York City, NY, for about the last year. While she still keeps in occasional contact with most all of her beloved fellow Bellas, these friendships are long distance. Feeling lonely with only a few friends and a rescued cat to keep her company in this huge city, Beca is surprised one evening by a familiar face.





	1. An Unexpected Visitor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flamingjune](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flamingjune/gifts).



Tap tap tap.

Beca slowly slid her headphones off of her ears, past the tousled, waves of chestnut hair fallen from her messy updo and rested them on her neck, all without looking up from her laptop. She cocked her head ever so slightly, as if the action activated some kind of super-hearing that would allow her to tell exactly where the noise was coming from. It sounded too loud and too intentional to be a light-chasing bug flapping its wings against the glass of her window, which was a yellow rectangle glowing into the courtyard of her apartment building. It sounded too distantly quiet to be a tap on her door - and too respectful for one of her neighbors’ visitors - especially at midnight. 

And then, there it was again - tap tap tap: slightly more intentioned this time, but with the definite ring of a something or someone audibly trying to get another’s attention. Beca was curious, but not enough to get up and look around. 

Finally, she raised her eyes from the glowing laptop screen to slowly scan the poorly lit room. As her eyes adjusted from the bright blue light of the screen to the harsh glow of a shadeless lamp that burned the retinas of anyone who dared glance at it, she noticed that, in fact, nothing was tapping on her window, insect or otherwise. Although her cat Bella, who had begrudgingly wandered into her life, was in the room, she was peacefully curled up at the foot of the bed, occasionally gently twitching a paw or a whisker in her sleep. 

None of her friends ever imagined Beca with a pet, and certainly not a cat. Not that Beca didn’t like animals - but it was more of an indifferent love. The slinky grey cat, Muffin, that hung around the second-story studio her friend let her record in had a small spectrum of reactions to Beca’s presence that ranged in intensity from hateful staring to quiet hissing, no matter how many times she put her hand out to make peace with the feline. As much as her friend An (short for Antoine) tried to convince Beca that their cat just took a while to warm up to people, she was starting to realize that after a year of knowing An and hanging around their studio, Muffin just really didn’t like her all that much.

So when Beca opened up the tire-mounted basket of her scooter one night on the way home from work to find a small kitten curled up inside, looking up at her with large, yellow-blue eyes and barely vocalizing a frightened “meow,” it was a shock to all that after five months the speckled orange cat was still in her life. Beca had immediately snapped a photo and sent it off with the words “WHAT DO I DO!!!!” to An, one of her only friends in the city. She hoped that her friend would quickly text her back with instructions on what to do with this tiny hitchhiker. They, however, did not text back until the next morning, probably having been networking somehow in the corner of a loud, dark club with the up-and-comings of New York’s music scene. This did not surprise Beca - as An’s availability by phone was often limited - but it frustrated her, as her only experience with cats was in avoiding them. 

With no choice but to at least make sure the little, mewing ball of fuzz was safe, Beca had budged down the zipper of her jacket and wedged the small cat snugly between her boobs. With few friends in the city who Beca felt like she knew well enough to dump a cat on, and realizing that despite her self-imposed isolation, the introverted 27-year-old sometimes did get lonely. So, after a sleepless night bathing the kitten in flea shampoo and combing the parasites out of her fur as the poor thing shivered and cried, Beca had walked into the conclusion that she kind of liked the cat’s company. And so, on the five-year anniversary of her graduation from Barden, Beca did the unlikely: bought a pet bed, a bag of food from the corner store and named the orange-y brown cat Bella.

Snapping her back to the present, a third, quick “tap tap tap” brought Beca’s eyes quickly to the door. 

Beca Mitchell was, for the most part, a calculated person. Occasionally, she made spontaneous decisions that never failed to surprise anyone, including herself. She also occasionally got begrudgingly pushed into decisions that she ended up also begrudgingly enjoying the outcome of. However, on this warm summer evening, with the air sticky in her small apartment and the laid-back beats overlapping on her computer screen and intertwining in her headphones, the last thing Beca wanted to do was break her lazy but determined focus. So, with a small, slightly annoyed sigh that seemed to perpetually be emitted by the brunette whenever she was driven to do something that she hadn’t fully and completely made her mind up that she wanted to do yet, Beca set her laptop down next to her and swung her legs slowly off the bed. 

Nudging a few boxes out of her way, she quietly padded over to the door. With slow caution, she pulled back the tab to the peephole, and moved her face in close to look through the distorted eye to the hallway. Minimized by the peephole’s distorted effect, Beca could see that the woman standing outside her door was turned slightly away, and looked like she was pulling a cell phone out of her pocket. But as Beca moved closer, the headphones around her neck clunked up against the wood of the door. Hearing the sound on the other side, the woman quickly ceased rummaging in her pocket and expectantly looked up.

She was looking into the face of the last person she expected to see standing outside her door at 12 PM on a Friday night - a person she thought was in still recording an album in LA, and who she hadn’t seen face to face in at least three years: 

Chloe Beale.


	2. Reminiscing and Daydreaming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set nine months in the past, Beca recounts her arrival in New York City greeted by fellow Bella and friend Cynthia-Rose. She also reminisces about her time at Barden and what seems like a lifetime ago, when her friend An wakes her from a daydream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you like the non-canon character I am crafting in An. Something I feel is important to Beca's life is a person who complements her but also is the yin to her yang, if you will. Something I feel is equally important to her life is someone who complements her because they are so similar. An to me is that person. I'm excited to shape this friendship and share a non-canon, non-binary character. 
> 
> Also! Expect to see some character designs for An coming soon! I will be posting them to my tumblr, @allisonranieri. Enough for now. Happy reading!

_Nine months prior…_

“So, you were in this, like, singing cult?”

“Aca-cult,” Beca corrected her new friend on the couch next to her with a smirk spreading across her face. Her blonde, buzzed-short fuzzy-haired companion let out a small bark of a laugh. Beca’s awkward half-smile turned into the real thing. She loved making An laugh, and it was easy to do at that. An was so utterly relaxed and easy going they immediately made Beca feel comfortable after she cracked a stupid joke or two. Making conversation wasn’t hard with An, and the two degrees of separation they shared with Cynthia-Rose further gave them something in common.

Cynthia-Rose was the only person Beca knew in New York City when she finally wound her way up to New York. After graduation, her fellow Bellas had spread across the country, many of them landing in Los Angeles. Her best friend Chloe was one of them. Even after four years, the weird feeling of not seeing the redhead every day had not worn off for Beca yet. When they were at Barden, Chloe had a special way of lovingly prying under her skin. But now that they were more than four years past that time, Beca realized something was missing in her life.

After working odd jobs here and there at radio stations up the East Coast, she finally responded to a bottom-of-the-barrel Craigslist post for a big station in New York City.

It was both exciting and terrifying all at once. While the introverted and shy Beca had had her comfort level walls torn down without warning often at Barden, she never failed to feel most comfortable sitting at her desk in the corner of her room, laptop open and headphones securely over her ears, furiously sliding bars and dragging loops around the screen. But, by the same token, that didn’t mean the brunette didn’t get lonely sometimes. Although she had grown somewhat accustomed to seeing an iPhone-sized version of Chloe’s face almost every evening, she still felt an emptiness walking up the steps of a building whose occupants she didn’t know.

So when Beca posted a photo to Instagram of her smirking face and a big ol’ thumbs up from the seat of a bus with the caption, “Headed to the Big Apple,” she felt a pang of happiness when one of her fellow Bellas and good friend Cynthia-Rose commented back, “UM, HMU NERD!”

Beca remembered the first time she saw Cynthia-Rose after graduating from Barden. She had been exiting the train platform in Grand Central Terminal when she saw the familiar swoosh of brightly colored hair come bobbing towards her. Not much had changed about Cynthia-Rose since their time at Barden. The five-foot-three-inch woman was walking so fast her bright bob of now-emerald hair was going in and out of visibility through the crowd. Soon enough, she could see her friend’s face sporting a huge grin, and before Beca could take a good look at her, Cynthia-Rose had engulfed her in a bear hug.

“Well, you haven’t gotten any taller, woman!” she beamed at Beca, and without missing a beat the brunette fired back,  
“And neither have you!”

The two friends linked arms, and marched happily out of the busy terminal together, catching up on all the life that been lived between the two of them since graduation.

Cynthia-Rose had offered to let Beca stay with her as long as she wanted, an offer which Beca quickly and gratefully took her friend up on. Beca soon found herself back on Craigslist, though, this time looking for a new place to stay, as soon as she realized that Cynthia-Rose’s partner An practically had their name on the mailbox too. Not that Beca found anything wrong with An, per se, as she realized she certainly saw more of them these days than she even saw of her fellow Bella.

Lost in recollection of memories of the previous months that had led her to the city, Beca hadn’t even realized she’d been blankly (and unintentionally) staring down her friend’s cat, Muffin. An waved a palm in front of Beca’s glazed eyes.

“Yo, hey, earth to Beca!” they laughed, and the brunette’s eyes focused again. Almost as though the cat could sense the change, Muffin gave a half-hearted hiss in Beca’s direction and gracefully plodded off around a corner.

“Hey space cadet, this is Houston,” An started again, “I think the Eagle has landed. I repeat, the Eagle has landed.”

Beca shot them a feigned withering glance, and An softened immediately. The two friends got along well for lots of reasons, one of the big ones being An’s affiliation to the music industry in New York, but also the similarities in their personalities. Both people had silly, often sarcastic senses of humor which were thinly veiled defense mechanisms for their overly empathetic and sensitive natures. It was uncanny how quickly the two had hit it off - An knew how to draw Beca a comfortable distance out of her shell, and Beca...well Beca wasn’t sure how she complemented An, other than she never felt so comfortable simply simultaneously existing in the same room with another human being before. Chloe was a close second, but the way she made Beca’s stomach flop and turn cut her out of the running. But Beca wasn’t thinking about that right now. And her face certainly wasn’t turning red.

“Woah, hey Becs, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bother you. If you were lost in a good part of your brain maze I certainly don’t wanna draw an arrow to the exit,” An apologized with a concerned look on their face. Beca smiled at the way An made poetry out of her words, easily tossing metaphors around like she devoured anthologies for breakfast.

“Nah, just thinking about old times. You brought up the Bellas and I started thinking about all the fun we had…” She trailed off, and chewed on her nail, looking away from An again, hoping to conceal her still blushing face. Not that An hadn’t already caught it.

“Wait a minute, are you blushing, Mitchell? Is this a Jesse thing?” Beca all but snorted. How her friend knew about him was beyond her, though she realized she probably didn’t have to think very hard to realize a certain short-lived New York City roommate of hers was behind this spread of information.

“Ha! Okay... so not Jesse… did somebody else capture the heart of Beca Mitchell at Barden University?”

“Well I’d hardly say Jesse ‘captured my heart’,” Beca retorted quickly. An laughed,

“Okay, okay, I get it, Jesse was not a ‘thing.’ No steamy aca-romps in the dorms? No sultry harmonizing in the communal showers?” An winked at Beca, who choked, as her friend had no idea just how on the money their second guess was.

Not often in the last four years did Beca find words escape her - except for in that moment, as she sat paralyzed on her friend’s couch, her face turning progressively redder.

An poked at Beca’s arm.

“What did I say??” they asked.

“Ughhhhh…” was all the brunette could muster, before she buried her head in her knees.

Now seriously intrigued, but also slightly concerned for their friend, An put a hand on the ball of Beca curled up on the couch.

“Okay, Becs, I just want you to know you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want. But I also want you to know I’m here to listen if…”

Before An could finish, Beca groaned loudly into her knees and said,

“Nooo. It’s not like thaaaat. It’s just...embarrassing.”

Ever the sweetest human, An gently coaxed Beca,

“Would you like to talk about it?” Literally anyone else trying to pry information of this nature out of Beca Mitchell would break their crowbar trying to wedge open her shell. But something about An’s genuine and sincere concern and kind curiosity just tore Beca down.

Still, she could only muster up enough to speak one word:

“Chloe,” she groaned, mouth barely rising above her knees.

An was surprised at the Bella’s answer. Not so much because they didn’t see Beca having a crush (or _whatever_ ) on another woman, but because despite their prodding about Jesse, An had almost pegged Beca for aromantic. Granted, they had only known their friend for a few months, but in that time, An had never once heard Beca talk about an interest in meeting anyone romantically, sexually, or otherwise. Certainly not about her past relationships, either.

“Alright, Cyn might’ve mentioned a Chloe once or twice. So you _did_ have a steamy aca-romp?”

This time, Beca actually glared in An’s direction. Before putting her head back on her knees again she muttered,

“No, try again.” An laughed loudly.

“Aha! So you _were_ shower buddies? Scrubbed each other’s backs? ‘Ooh, pass the loofah please, Beca,’" An mimicked, and Beca raised her head full off her knees this time to give her friend a withering look.

“Do you really wanna know?” she asked. An nodded.

“It’s embarrassing, I warned you.” she repeated, and An nodded again. “Okay, fine. Chloe cornered me naked in the shower once and wouldn’t leave until I sang David Guetta for her.”

It was all An could do to contain themselves, and so instead they brought their hand to their forehead and rubbed it over their eyes, as if to hide the repressed laughter.

Instead, they smirked, “David Guetta? Really?” Beca wasn’t having it. She fired back,

“Yeah. Titanium’s my jam.” (My lady jam, she thought to herself).

“Hmm, okay,” An pondered. “But I fail to see what was so traumatizing about this experience. Did she steal your good shampoo?” Beca rolled her eyes.

“No, she was _naked_. And _I_ was naked. And she made me _sing_.” An looked her friend over once, and then a gigantic grin spread across their face.

“What!” Beca snapped, and An’s grin grew even wider.

“You liked what you saw, didn’t you?”

Just when Beca thought she couldn’t get any redder, the iPhone sitting in her lap started buzzing. A picture of the beaming redhead herself popped up, with the prompt to accept an incoming FaceTime call. It was their usual time, after all. Beca stared at the phone, immobile, as she felt the waves come bowling in, tossing her stomach around like a small shell caught in a tide. Honestly, she had purposefully not given a lot of thought to the incident since it happened years ago. But now, as she sat on her friend’s couch nearing midnight in the middle of Brooklyn, a couple beers in her, Beca Mitchell realized she could think of nothing but Chloe Beale’s perfect, naked body.


	3. Fire Away, Fire Away: I Am Titanium

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back to the present day: Beca invites Chloe in, and Chloe invites Beca out.

_Present day:_

An eternity of seconds passed as Beca stared through the peephole on her apartment door at the grinning redhead. Even through the distorted eye, she could see Chloe’s blue eyes shimmering with excitement, and they started Beca’s head spinning. She felt a familiar tingle ripple throughout the bottom of her stomach, something most people probably referred to as butterflies, she now realized. Too overwhelmed to take stock of her appearance, Beca swung open the door right before she saw Chloe start to raise her knuckles to knock again, completely forgetting that she was now exposing her dingy white tank top and men’s boxer clad body to the hallway - and her friend.

While Beca may not have noticed she hadn’t put on more decent clothes, Chloe definitely did. Her eyes made a very brief scan over Beca’s body, until they flicked back up to her eyes. She noticed on her fleeting journey across Beca’s body that the brunette was unknowingly biting her lip. This, however, was far too much for Chloe to handle, and she pulled Beca in abruptly to a tight embrace.

As Beca let out a tiny squeal, she put soft pressure on her instinctual brakes - pulling back, and grabbing Chloe by the arms, she looked into her friend’s eyes. They were beautiful, swirling pools on this warm summer evening, and Beca got caught in them for a second, before Chloe cocked her head slightly, as if to ask what Beca was doing. She quickly collected herself and snapped back to reality, saying quietly, but aggressively,

“It’s good to finally see you in person again, dude.”

Those sparkling pools lit even brighter, as if hit by blinding rays of sunshine that reflected off their rippled surface. A broad, pearly smile spread across Chloe’s face, mirroring the joy that her eyes were expressing.

“Hey, you too, Becs, you too,” she softly trilled. This was too much for Beca - her face inches away from that of her best friend’s - so close to her pink, glossy spread lips, close enough to see individual strands of her shiny red hair falling in a natural pattern across Chloe’s face. She put her foot playfully to the brakes again, pushing Chloe a little further back to really take her in, and brusquely toned,

“What are you even doing here you LA nerd?”

Chloe chuckled, and Beca released her grip on her friend’s bare arms, watching the white fingerprints her hands left on the redhead’s freckled skin. She gestured with a subtle head nod towards the dim apartment waiting beyond the door frame, and Chloe followed her inside, lifting her small suitcase over the lip of the door.

Beca flopped down on her back on the double bed that took up half the one bedroom apartment, and gestured vaguely to Chloe as if to say “make yourself at home.” Both women knew even the gesture itself was unnecessary, as Chloe had already felt at home as soon as she locked eyes with the brunette once again. Flopping down next to Beca on the squeaky mattress covered in a giant, fluffy grey comforter that looked entirely out of place given the time of year, Chloe finally answered her friend’s question with a word:

“Surprise!!!”

She turned towards Beca and grinned. Beca propped herself up on one arm to gaze at her bubbly friend, and suddenly found a strange sensation overtaking her face muscles - she was grinning back. She flung her free arm around Chloe’s torso and buried her head in the nook between her red hair and the thin black strap covering her shoulder, letting out a silent shriek.

Chloe knew her friend well enough to know her unorthodox ways of handling her emotions, though the usually fairly reserved and sarcastic woman seemed to be in unusually good spirits this evening. Not giving it another thought, Chloe pulled her friend tightly into her side. She felt Beca’s soft cleavage smash into her shoulder. One hundred percent sure Beca could also feel the tingle that was now shooting up her body, starting from her lower pelvis, she pulled back quickly, almost startled at her own reaction.

Fortunately, Beca was simultaneously reaching her limit of human-contact-before-combustion also, and she pulled away as well. The two friends laid back on their elbows, and Beca giggled,

“Well whatever the reason, I’m glad you’re here! Hey,” she added with a smile, “maybe this year I’ll get to celebrate your birthday with you!”

Chloe flashed Beca a grin:

“Well,” she saucily intoned, “I will be in town for a whole week, so if you can stand to put up with me for that long, then yes! You can.”

Beca rolled her eyes,

“Okay, whatever, dude. Just as long as the surprises have ended and you aren’t going to be dragging me into some singing competition.” Beca could barely hold back a sly smile.

Feigning a wounded expression, Chloe retorted,

“Well, I _did_ already make plans to dress up in matching flight attendant uniforms and perform,” she dragged out the words, referencing Beca’s dislike of the original Bella ensembles, “ _but_ since you don’t seem to want to participate, I still have Plan B.” Letting out a giggle, she continued, “Your absolute favorite thing to do.”

“Which is…?”

Chloe beamed a mischievous smile: “Dancing!”

Beca groaned and leaned back on the bed. Now suddenly aware of her appearance, she wasn't sure how it wasn't totally obvious that she was in full on turned-in-for-the-night apparel. Seeming unperturbed by the unhappy noises coming from her friend, Chloe cheerfully hopped off the bed and unzipped her suitcase. She whipped out a simple black minidress and a towering pair of shiny patent silver heels. Without an ounce of modesty, she began to unzip her jeans and wiggle them down her hips.

Beca turned over on the bed, face down. She honestly didn’t think she could handle seeing her friend strip down right now. Or ever. Without thinking, she started humming to herself, hoping, perhaps, to mask the sound of clothing being removed. She continued to absent mindedly hum into her pillow, when all of a sudden she heard Chloe sing,

“Hey Becs!”

Relieved, and hoping that maybe her friend was done changing, she sat up and turned around quickly. Chloe stood in front of her on the crackled and faded wood floor of her apartment, naked, except for a plain, light pink pair of hipster-style underwear.

“DUDE! You have GOT to stop doing that!” she sputtered at her friend. Chloe giggled mischievously, her bright blue eyes shining,

“Beca, I haven’t heard you singing that since-” before Chloe finished, Beca snapped,

“Since the last time you accosted me while naked?” Chloe giggled again, and beamed, bending down to grab her small dress off the floor. In a flash, she pulled it over her head, and wiggled into the tight fabric.

“Well, will you sing it for me?”

In another seamlessly quick motion, she stepped around her small suitcase and reached an arm out, offering to help Beca up from the bed. Chloe watched the tiny brunette roll her eyes, and sighed,

“Okay, well at least zip up my dress for me?” She feigned a sad look, and Beca sighed, taking Chloe’s outstretched hand. Chloe carefully stepped back a pace to give Beca room to stand, and then whipped around, exposing her back to Beca. Beca stared at her friend’s thin, smooth frame. The exposed V of Chloe’s dress showed Beca just a peek of the thin light pink underwear she had seen briefly before. It was adorned with a thin band of delicate lace. Her eyes made her way up Chloe’s back, past her braless midriff, and all the way up to Chloe’s shoulders, where Beca suddenly noticed her friend gesturing with her left hand at the place where the zipper should close. She was holding her hair up loosely with her right. Chloe sighed in a playful way, gesturing harder with her hand.

Without thinking, as she reached down for the zipper of Chloe’s dress, Beca started out softly,

“I’m bulletproof, nothing to lose,” and as she grabbed the zipper, and started slowly tugging it upwards, she watched Chloe’s torso expand as her lungs filled. She joined Beca, harmonizing beautifully above her,

“Fire away, fire away.” Their two voices intertwined beautifully, meshing with each other with pure complementary affection, like two friends hugging after being reunited for the first time in a while.

“Ricochet, you take your aim,” as Beca closed the gap in the black dress, pulling the zipper slowly upwards,

“Fire away, fire away.” She smoothly pulled the zipper up until the dress was completely closed in back, and Chloe turned around to look at her, all the while singing,

“You shoot me down, but I won’t fall,” Beca watched her friend turn to face her, and then watched from beneath dark eyeshadow-y lids, as Chloe’s eyes looked into hers, and sang

“I am titanium.” It happened so fast she couldn’t say for certain, but Beca could’ve sworn she saw Chloe’s eyes flick over her lips. Chloe beamed, and taking a quick breath in unison, they continued,

“You shoot me down, but I won’t fall.” A smile started to creep over Beca’s lips as well, as they finished out together,

“I am titanium.” The two women grinned at each other, lost in the moment. After what seemed like long, heart-racing minutes, Chloe broke the silence and said,

“Well, is that what you’re wearing Becs?” Beca rolled her eyes.

“Ugh, dude, first of all, who says I’m going? And second of all, even if I was going, I would at least wear pants.”

Chloe snorted, and picked up a pair of skinny jeans laying on top of a pile of stacked laundry. She knew her friend well enough to know that Beca would feel more comfortable in a place she already felt uncomfortable in if she was wearing pants.

“Fine,” Beca sighed, taking the pants from her friend. When Chloe didn’t turn around, she loudly and exasperatedly cried,

“Dude!” with a gesture of her left hand upwards. Chloe turned around with a smile, and crossed her arms. She tapped her foot lightly on the floor, and pretended to look at a watch on her wrist. Beca quickly pulled the jeans on, tucking her boxers into the legs of the pants, and slipped a camouflage jacket over the white tank.

“I’m ready,” she sighed.

* * *

One subway ride and an hour later, the two women were making their way to the bar at a small club on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. After ordering two rum and cokes for them, Beca followed Chloe over to a table in the corner. They slid on the high seats surrounding the tall table, and Chloe looked at Beca. 

“I invited someone I think you’ll remember,” she smiled. Intrigued, Beca asked,

“Oh yeah? Who?”

Chloe’s smile widened, and she said,

“Our friend Benji! Did you know he lives here now? He’s on Broadway!” Beca smiled and shook her head, and Chloe continued, “Yeah! I’d love to see the musical he’s in while I’m here. Apparently he’s got the lead. I’m glad he’s kind of come out of his shell since Barden.”

Surprised, Beca asked,

“What is he in?” Chloe thought for a moment, and then slowly said,

“I thiiink it’s called... _Dear Evan Somebody?_ … But he said he’d be here when he gets out of rehearsal, like around two.” Beca nodded, and the two launched into conversation about the musicals they had and hadn’t seen.

An hour went by and several drinks more were had by each woman, both awkwardly cradling them and nervously sipping often. Chloe tapped on her phone, and pressed the home button to illuminate the screen.

“I wonder where Benji is,” she pondered. Beca shrugged, and then slowly put down her drink. She looked at Chloe’s eyes. She was shivering slightly, even though the club was packed and warm. She looked across the small square table at her friend and said,

“I mean, I’d love to see him, but it’s nice to just spend time with you.” She continued to stare into Chloe’s blue eyes, and when her friend didn’t say anything, Beca made a split decision - feeling fearless from the two and a half rum and cokes she had consumed, she reached her hand out and brushed a shiny red lock of Chloe’s hair behind her ear. She couldn’t read the expression on Chloe’s face. It was as though she was caught between a small smile and the beginning of a word. Finally, Beca added,

“Spending time with you - catching up!” Chloe felt a fire erupt inside her chest. Beca had been hard to read earlier, back in her apartment, after she had ended their intimate moment of song when she motioned Chloe to turn around. But now, Chloe could tell, with a few drinks under her belt, Beca was feeling more honest. More...open.

She couldn’t stand it, looking into the wide grey-blue eyes of her friend, which only got wider and more and more sparkly with each passing second. It was too much for Chloe Beale, and she grabbed her empty glass, mumbled something about wanting to get another drink, and strolled over to the bar.

Expecting a reply, Beca’s smile faded a little. She watched as the slim back she had stared at for what seemed an eternity glided away from her across the room. She looked down into her own drink. When Beca looked up again, she saw a deep brunette with a short pixie cut and bangs that swooped over her eyes lean over to say something to Chloe. The two smiled at each other.

Chloe sauntered back over to the table, setting her drink down quickly and grinning, invited Beca,

“Wanna dance with us? I figured we could have a little more fun before Benji shows up!” Beca shook her head and motioned towards her phone vaguely. This seemed to be enough for Chloe and she ran off towards the more crowded corner of the bar where the dark-haired woman stood. Her friend beamed at the woman, and Beca watched her as the woman leaned over and whispered something in her friend’s ear.

Trying to ignore the rising frustration; no, jealousy, in her chest, Beca looked down and took a large sip of her drink. When she looked up again, the redhead had her arm around the other woman, and had started dancing. As Beca watched, the woman grabbed Chloe’s hand and pulled her into the center of the room, where a group of people were moving closely in time to the music.

And with that, Beca downed the rest of her drink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would love to hear feedback so far! I am posting the link to this fic on my personal tumblr @smallpartsofmysoul, as well as I will start to post character design and art on my art tumblr: @allisonranieri. Feel free to follow me either place for updates!


	4. 3 Unread Messages

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beca slowly remembers the events of the night before, and receives some surprising text messages from an unknown number.

When Beca cracked open her eyes the next morning she saw the world spinning around her. It took everything she had to close them again. As she did, she heard the muffled, distant beat of music likely coming out of laptop speakers or a phone. Beca squinted again, spinning her head with a groan into the couch pillow as the overcast, but white Brooklyn sky flooded her eyes. Finally, tentatively, lifting her head, she blinked, looking across the bright room, startled to see a green-eyed cat staring back at her. As soon as Muffin realized he was making eye contact with Beca, the sleek grey feline opened his mouth to bare his teeth and hissed. Annoyed, Beca groaned and tried to get up.

Immediately realizing her mistake, the petite woman with incredibly tousled hair flopped as quickly back down into the couch as fast as she had started to pry herself from it. Letting out another audible groan, Beca heard soft, but intentioned footsteps. An poked their head around the corner, dressed in a sports bra and a pair of loose sweatpants that cinched at the ankles. A grin spread across their slim, bony face. An looked at their friend with kind but knowing eyes and said softly,

“Good night, huh, Mitchell?” Beca groaned again. It was all she could seem to muster at the moment in the way of audible communication. She lifted up her head in An’s direction and shook it. Even a mild turn of the head caused bolts of pain to shoot through her head, and she laid it back down on the couch.

“Alright, well, regardless of how the night was it is definitely not looking like a good morning,” An chuckled, as they walked softly over to the edge of the couch and set down a large bottle of Powerade dripping with condensation next to their moaning friend. “Here, you’ll need this. I got you sour melon, your favorite flavor,” they smiled, mocking a silent finger gun “pew pew” at Beca as they took a few steps backwards. Beca groaned again, this time a low staccato of a noise. An understood, and laughed,

“You’re welcome, Beca. If you need me I’ll be in the kitchen. I’ve got milk and cereal and not much else. There’s also coffee.” 

Coincidentally, as soon as they mentioned it, Beca caught a whiff of the strong beverage in the air, and she heard her friend’s soft socked footsteps retreating from the room as they got quieter and quieter. Just like any hangover, she knew at some point she had to just get the bad stuff over with. She gingerly lifted her head off the pillow, while simultaneously reaching down for the sugary drink An had placed next to her. 

As soon as the ice cold liquid hit the back of Beca’s throat, it sent more stabbing pains through her skull. She swallowed, gritting her teeth, and gripped the bottle hard against the couch, using it to help propel herself up. Fighting the pain in her head and the wave of nausea that hit her like a bag of potatoes dropped into her stomach all of a sudden, Beca started to make her way from the couch. The faint beats she had heard earlier started getting progressively louder. She passed through the dark wood-framed doorway from the living room into her friend’s kitchen to see the slim figured person sitting atop a high stool, one leg folded under their body.

An whipped their head around (in a motion that pained Beca just to witness) and upon seeing their bleary-eyed friend enter the room, immediately hit a button on their phone, putting a pause to the music playing. 

“Come in, come in, have a seat, Mitchell!” they quietly intoned while gesturing to a stool across the counter. “I’ve got Lucky Charms and Chex. Take your pick.” Beca’s queasy stomach must’ve been visible on her face, because An continued, “or, you know, ride it out, that’s cool too.”

Beca flopped down onto the high stool with a grunt, looked up at her friend and managed a long groan before putting her head to the marble countertop, her brown messy hair spreading out on the cool, sleek surface. A few seconds later, she felt soft, long fingers gathering it all up, and she realized An had walked around the island counter and was softly playing with their friend’s hair. Beca raised her head and turned around to look up into An’s hazel eyes. Upon their meeting, she watched as An’s face turned upwards in a comforting smile. With a slight tilt of their head to the right, An stopped playing with Beca’s hair and inquired,

“So, what, uh, fun did you have last night?” Beca stared back at her friend. She stared at the freckles spattered across her friend’s face, only slightly darker than their light brown skin. The majority of their freckles were splashed across their nose, something Beca had noticed immediately about her friend as soon as she had met them. Beca was very good at picking up on details when she was nervous - facial features, expressions, habits, clothing, etc. With An it was their freckles. Initially, when they first met, Beca would watch An talk and quietly count their freckles to maintain the appearance of listening closely even when she wanted to look away. 

But now, sitting upon the high stool in the brightly lit Brooklyn loft, she was as much looking  _ at  _ An as she was looking  _ through  _ An, trying to remember exactly what she had done last night. All of a sudden, she remembered a flash of red hair. Staring a little harder at An, she then remembered the head of a dark brown haired woman. Groaning, An tilted their head even more to the right. Curiosity taking over, they prodded Beca further,

“What, Mitchell? What happened?” Beca was not one to cry very often, but she felt some rage tears building up in front of her glossy blue eyes. Swallowing back the ugly cry she felt coming, she sputtered out one word:

“Chloe.” 

“Aw, baby, come here,” An softly sung as they pulled Beca’s messy head of hair into their bare stomach and flat chest covered in a tight sports bra. Beca complied, and sunk her head into her friend’s embrace. An wrapped their slim, but surprisingly muscular arms around Beca’s head, and held their friend there for a while. Once they felt her taking on the posture of a ragdoll, An let go and sat Beca upright with a firm grip on her shoulders.

“Ok, Mitchell, let’s talk about it. It’s not gonna do you any good to stew about this forever, you know.” Beca groaned, but didn’t shut down, which An conceded was a good thing.

“Ok. So what happened with Chloe? I thought she came to surprise you?” Beca raised her head quickly and said sharply,

“You knew???” An laughed,

“Whoops.” Their hazel eyes sparkled, and it softened Beca a little. She muttered an “oh,” and slumped down again on the stool. 

“Yeah, I knew. But I don’t know anything other than that plan! Promise,” An vowed, holding their hand over their thin-framed chest in a silly mock pledge. “So, isn’t that a good thing? I mean, seeing your best friend again in person after three years apart?”

Beca usually put on a good front, but under pressure or in unfavorable circumstances (such as a bad hangover), she cracked easily and would usually spill whatever was on her mind, granted she trusted the person she was talking to. She reached her hand to the cold Powerade, thought twice, and sputtered,

“Chloe showed up, dragged me out to a bar-thing, things were going fine, and then I went and embarrassed myself by talking about my  _ feelings _ ,” she emphasized with a flail of her hands, “and then she ran off and flirted with some dark haired chick.” The words came rushing out of Beca, and just as quickly, she seemed to remember each of the moments with fleeting, but photographic detail. 

Before An could reach out or say anything to comfort their friend, Beca threw herself from the stool, and in the same moment, raced towards the open door to the closet-sized bathroom. An didn’t hear anything, so they slowly approached the cracked door and quietly knocked while peering in,

“You ok there, Mitchell?” Their friend looked absolutely miserable. Her tiny frame slung across the ivory toilet, arm resting on the lip of the seat, Beca Mitchell looked up at An with big, glossy, emotionless eyes. She quickly turned again and stared into the water inches from her face, her chest silently heaving.

An stepped over Beca’s legs and nimbly sat between the brunette and the cold, white tiled wall. Reaching their slender fingers out, An once again lovingly pulled back Beca’s tangled brown locks. With an abrupt, raspy cough, Beca turned her face from the toilet bowl to glance at her friend. An had never seen Beca really act  _ affectionately _ , so what happened next shocked them.

Beca slumped her body backwards into her friend’s slender, taut frame, resting her head on their dark grey sports bra. Still stroking Beca’s hair, and still shocked that they were now cradling their poor, sick friend, An moved some long bangs away from Beca’s eyes. 

“I’m sorry, Beca,” An started, “I don’t know your Chloe, but I don’t think she meant to hurt you. Sometimes people react strangly when confronted with feelings.” An shifted their body a little, so Beca’s soft torso wasn’t resting on their hip bone anymore, and continued,

“I mean, look at me. I’m poly, and I’ve always been. It’s always something I’ve known, and always something I’ve acted on. But how do you think it felt when I saw the first person I truly loved - Cynthia-Rose - not only not reciprocate my feelings for her, but to completely act the opposite of how I felt about her? It sucked.” 

Taking a deep breath, An sighed and looked down at Beca, “Honestly? I think I hooked up with two people that night. Not because I liked either of them romantically, but because in my head I thought it would make me feel better.”

Pausing, they stroked Beca’s hair again, and chuckled, “but hey, at least it turned out okay. I got the girl, and I still hook up with one of them occasionally!” 

Beca gave a short sigh, and lightly rolled her eyes, even though she knew An couldn’t see from behind her. It was all well and good for An, who had seemingly sorted out those feelings fairly quickly and with ease, and now had an amazing primary partner whom they adored. Beca was happy for An, but didn’t know what to say. Their pep talk didn’t seem to make her feel any better, so she slumped back into her friend’s embrace.

“Hey,” An sat up suddenly, “is that your phone?” Beca sat up as well, and heard several muffled “tings” from the other room.

“Crap, yeah,” she groaned, and pushed herself off the tile floor. After finding her phone wedged between two couch cushions, Beca pressed the home button, illuminating the screen. Her nearly dead cell phone displayed that she had three messages from an unknown number. Beca placed her finger directly on the home button to unlock the device, and tapped on the messenger icon, then on the thread from the unknown number.

“Hey Beca, it’s Aubrey,” the first message read.

“Just making sure you got home safe,” the second message read. And with a loud, miserable groan, Beca’s eyes read, and then re-read the last message:

“Hope you’re doing okay - I can still taste your lips.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first thing my girlfriend said to me after I read this to her was: "you're a piece of shit!" 
> 
> (oops lol)
> 
> I'll be posting some art soon - would you rather see 
> 
> A. a sick Beca leaning up against her friend An on the bathroom floor
> 
> B. a harmonious Beca and Chloe getting ready to go out as Beca zips up her best friend's dress
> 
> C. a shocked Beca looking at her text messages 
> 
> or
> 
> D. an elated Chloe eyeing a boxer-clad Beca as they see each other for the first time in three years


End file.
